How Tight Your Inner Kid Hugs You: the story of a daring rescue

March 2026: Its possible that I won't be able to sleep until I write some of this down. Its been a minute. And there is too much on my plate. I feel so strange and don't have a way to be with it. For remedy I imagine myself in a place that no longer exists: a cafe at the end of the wharf with the seals singing beneath our feet and waves rolling in from the deep sea. A cup of coffee on the square of yellow formica table. A folded newspaper set to the side, 2 eggs over medium, toast and hash browns. Tabasco sauce, and because its an imagination game and I'm playing in the time stream, a pack of camel straights and a cigarette lit in the ashtray (indoors!) sending a ribbon of smoke towards the ceiling. Oh how I need the smile the waitress offers with the refill. I sit here in the now with tears streaming down my face just imagining the pleasure of that breakfast.

There is a sign taped on the wall by my desk, 2 by 2 inches or so, it reads “how tight does the kid you hug you?!” The sign next door reads “use the difficulty” (I hope you get the joke). Anyhoo. I ran into that kid the other day, went looking for her actually in one of our old haunts, also by the water in a spot where trickster gulls drop clams onto the pavement and you have to watch where you step. Right, anyhoo. I ran into her. I don't have words for how hard she holds on, but I let her stay and we got back in the car together.

Turns out I was the main character in the story of a daring rescue, a stealthy recovery, a promise kept. She is making sure I won't be alone in these months before my mother dies. She knows the whole story of how we were abandoned on the shore. She knows the whole story of how the root line of water-stone-bone-tree wove itself into me so that I could find my own resonance and survive. She knows the whole story and I can't do this next part of adult life without her. Best yet, I got to introduce her to the sanctuary that is Suki, the doglove my lonely child self had so longed for and that circle was made whole too. We laughed and laughed. In the mornings we start the day in love. In the night we drift into sleep, in love.

June 2026: I forget how physical grieving is. When my dad died it took about 4 months to come out the other side of feeling untethered. Different with my mom's death, a bigger shift. And my cousins call out of the blue to tell me little stories. I don't really have the vocabulary for it yet. It'll come though... the new language for living and breathing and existing in a world my mother does not also inhabit. For now my child self is a bit bewildered, but I've always had a knack for recognizing impermanence and finding my way. Meanwhile, its ok not to be ok.

My inner kid is still riding shotgun and she hugs me soooo tight. And in the wee hours of the morning when I sat weeping the tears that followed my mother's last breath she sat right in my middle so that I could hold myself up for the next necessary steps. I've been finding life on earth a bit overwhelming and being untethered by my mother's death is not helping with that predicament. I hope she stays with me now, this kid me who is curious and gentle and steadfastly forgiving. This reunion has been a fierce reassurance.

I always thought of my inner child as a liability with a bundle of burdensome emotions in tow. Maybe because thats how I was treated by my family. A puddle of potentially fraught trauma response that needed to be managed. Now she has become my friend and companion, even with all the feelings. I can't describe how this happened that March day. I was looking out on the water and the freewheeling gulls whose ancestors taught me flight. Then I felt that holding-on-for-dear-life hug grab me from the inside-out, like she'd been waiting for me to show up and crack open just wide enough to let all her light in. Insisting I hug back and not let go.

So, um, yeah... my mom died a week ago today. I am sad, and relieved, and honestly its a little intoxicating to find myself not having to please or protect either of my parents. Not even having to agree with their version of the story! Whichever story. And also, I am the holder of both their stories. What an odd dance it is to have ancestors and descendants. Here I stand balanced (kinda sorta) in this moment where everything is shifting. Held up from the inside by 7 year old me and sorting through my mother's curated belongings, taking pictures off the wall as it all begins to fade from existence.

This coming Sunday we will gather to celebrate my mother Havi's life. My Inner Little will rise with me to the podium, she will squeeze my hand when I cry. And when I share with assembled guests my mother's chosen final quip (yes, I asked how she wanted me to to end her funeral) we'll shout it to the rafters. Fuck the fascists! This is my mom's way of encouraging us to LIVE, her version of my favorite Maya Angelou quote: "Don't you dare give up. Be encouraged by the beauty that is yet to come."